Friday, September 19, 2008

I have become smitten with "singing" insects. Much of this interest was stimulated by the fabulous book The Singing Life of Insects, by Lang Elliot and Wil Hershberger. This is one of the finest volumes on natural history, bar none. I highly recommend it and if you get a chance to pick one up, please do.

Learning about singing insects is interesting and useful on several fronts. One, the collective symphonies produced by various insects, especially at night, are among nature's most pleasing sounds. Two, it is always nice to know what organism makes what sound when one is outdoors. Three, most of these insects are visually beautiful, and knowing their sounds allows one to better track them down for a look. Four, and something that all birders should take note of, is that they provide outstanding practice for our ears. The insect chorus comes on and starts to hit its colective stride after the birds have largely ceased singing. Moving one's ear over to learning insects will prove to be great practice for honing one's audio birding skills.I found myself out in the woods recently, and was attracted to the musical if not somewhat monotone song of this insect, a Black-horned Tree Cricket, Oecanthus nigricornis. Most tree crickets sing at night; this one apparently will sing during the day, too. Even though their trill is rather loud and forceful, at least once your ears are dialed in, they are devilishly hard to locate. Like many singing insects, their senses are well developed and when a large clumsy humanoid moves in too close, they cease singing. With a bit of perseverance and a lot of luck, I eventually located it.Black-horned Tree Cricket may be the showiest of its ilk, with gorgeous wing venation in tones of greenish-white, set off by bold black legs, antennae, and head. The almond-shaped eyes are especially interesting and lend the critter an alienlike appearance.

Once I discovered him - it is a male; he was singing - it was very cooperative. The adults are predatorial, feeding primarily on aphids and even caterpillars. Speaking of the latter, don't ever be one. Caterpillars are largely defenseless tubular bags of goo that are preyed on by all manner of animals. Your chances, as a caterpillar, of making it to the winged moth/butterfly stage, are not good.

Next time you are out and about, especially at night, pay heed to the rich insect symphony.

2 comments:

I photographed a cool looking insect almost two years ago, and never knew what it was until I rented "the singing life" from the library this past spring and there it was. The photos in that book are incredible.

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About Me

I am a lifelong Ohioan who has made a study of natural history since the age of eight or so - longer than I can remember! A fascination with birds has grown into an amazement with all of nature, and an insatiable curiosity to learn more. One of my major ambitions is to get more people interested in nature. The more of us who care, the more likely that our natural world will survive.

About the photos, and permission to use

All photographs on these web pages are the exclusive property of Jim McCormac, and are protected under United States and International copyright laws. The photographs may not be copied, reproduced, stored, distributed or manipulated without written permission. All rights are reserved.

If you contact me requesting free photos, the reply may be long in coming :-)

I've been taking photographs for a few decades, but never became fully interested and engaged in photography until 2003. That's when I got my first digital camera. Since then, photography has become a passion and a steadily growing addiction. If you delve back far enough into this blog, you will see photos that were made with a variety of Panasonic point & shoot bridge cameras. Then came a Canon Rebel DSLR, followed by a Nikon D7000. I've since returned to Canon, and use their gear almost exclusively. My camera bodies are a Canon 5D Mark III, which is an awesome full-frame sensor camera, and a Canon 7D Mark II. The latter is a 1.6 crop factor camera, and I use it almost exclusively for birds and distant wildlife.

The lens bag includes the following Canon lenses: 100mm f/2.8L-macro; the sensational but bizarre MP-E 65 mega-macro; a 180mm f/3.5 macro; a 16-35mm f/4L wide-angle; a 50mm f/1.4; a 100-400 f4.5/5.6 II; and a 500mm f/4L II, sometimes used with a 1.4 extender (which makes it a 700mm). I've also got a Tamron 70-200mm and Sigma 24mm Art (great lenses!). I do lots of macro, and my typical flash gear is the Canon Twin-Lite setup. If the gear needs three-legged stabilization, it is mounted on an Induro tripod, attached to an Induro Gimbal head. Finally, I've got a GoPro Hero, which is fully waterproof and can be used for underwater work. Sometimes I even use the camera or video feature on my iPhone 5S smartphone - it's amazing how good phone cameras have become.

Speaking, guiding gigs 2016

NOTE: Click on listed events for details (inmost cases).

January 16, 2016 - Ohio Ornithological Society's annual winter raptor day at the Wilds, Muskingum County, Ohio. Leading field trip.